It's been some time since this has been seriously discussed and my last topic on the matter was more of an exercise in moaning and groaning rather than making any real effort. I have some ideas I would like to pitch out for consideration, but first I have something else I'd like to write down.

I want everyone who's reading this topic right now to think about what night ops has done for you. A lot of you new guys probably don't have the same sense of comradery us older members have because back when this forum was more active we were always helping each other out with struggles during our operations and this website provided an escape from the norm. Some of us have met each other in person. I can't speak for everyone but the general concept of night ops helped shape a very large and irreplaceable part of my life. I do not want to see it die.

I have met much younger people who are interested in this type of thing, I know the concept isn't outdated. People are still out there seeking the forbidden thrill of the night. Let's bring back night ops not just as a sport, but as a society. A micro-culture of value and skills where every operative doesn't have to feel like a lone wolf because of how slow we've become here.

My first proposition is simple: let's promote security and keep it simple for newbies. In short, use Tor to access NON. This should be integrated into the registration process so new users see that it exists and it's literally as easy as downloading a browser. It's not a perfect solution, but it's a damn good start and 99.99% of members aren't going to be posting anything that honestly warrants stronger security. This is merely to encourage posting rather than being afraid to because of PERSEC reasons.

Second is also simple but harder to accomplish: We need to recruit. In the past, I shunned places like 4chan and Reddit, but demographics are changing. A lot of people who are younger and potentially interested frequent these places. Urbex does well in such places. I have a strategy to make this a more viable recruiting option.

Basically, we need a group of us to become more active, post more, and cross post to these places. Stay frequent here so we can field new topics as they come in so we don't appear to be a light bulb that burns out as soon as people draw near. Xanatos, you're our most active member. Despite my inactivity, I'm willing to pitch in for this and do more. I ask that anyone else on board do the same. If my craziness doesn't reach fruitition, I don't have too many years left in me before night ops becomes physically difficult for me to perform. We can do this, people. Get ANYONE involved you know of that's still interested in this place but doesn't do much.

Secant, any ideas you've been squirreling away we might want to know about?

Let's use this thread to discuss collaboration with other places and each other to make this happen. Me, I'll plot some operations for content. I think we've covered gear and technique into the ground, let's just bring the fucking ops to the table and make things interesting again. This is about the operations and only the operations, that's where the magic is. Not your favorite knife, not my mad doctor shit, the ops are what keep us coming back. Let's fucking do this.

Social media is becoming the primary form of online communications, and I don't exactly see a Night Ops Facebook page in the near future. We've tried recruiting from 4chan before, frequenting the most relevant boards such as /k/ but we get the odd visitor who creates an account and then deftly forgets we exist.

What we need is a way to make Night Ops relevant and fun again. Stressing the importance of PERSEC, especially with the increasingly draconian laws in places like the UK, is a good start. I don't know how many of you have been following the antics of /pol/, but we might be able to offer some assistance for season 6 of Capture the Flag with Shia LaBeouf: http://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/ ... 49243.html

We are all books containing thousands of pages and within each lies an irreparable truth.
What is locked, can be opened. What is hidden, can be found. What is yours... can be mine.

I think both are necessary. Nobody wants to invest time and effort into somewhere it looks like two people are going to read. We will definitely need more traffic coming through here and like you say, bringing night ops back to the basics.

Why not simply start posting ops on Reddit perhaps, get a thread going and just keep it going with a link back here? I think we're going to need to go abroad for a bit on this rather than saying "Come on over!" when there's currently not much happening here. Basically, if we're going to increase our activity, do so in both locations.

Well, a forum member I've been in touch with has some good ideas about how to expose NONET to TOR. We had a design that would expose NONET as both a normal HTTPS site but also as a .onion, so that people could choose their preferred means of access. Maybe just going straight .onion would be better, people would be more likely to post. Or separate clearnet and .onion forums? The lack of COMSEC in general I think turns away many people. Switching to HTTPS would be a massive improvement even if we do nothing else.

For me, the cool thing about the night ops thread on &T were the stories... the cool shit we do and the cool places we visit are the real deal. How can we capitalize on that? One idea I toyed around with was to go the "content creator" route and have a blog type system where VIPs post detailed op reports or something like that. Like the op threads we have now, but focused more on the opper, where the writer has more freedom and creative options. Maybe that would make it easier to post to other sites. I could see an RSS feed or mailing list working in this situation too... since new ops are relatively scarce, have a way to remind subscribed people that a new op has been posted.

Or maybe we come up with some other topics to talk about? Crypto stuff seems to be popular, maybe we could try a crypto forum. I have a lot to say on that and could make a solid contribution, always wanted to do a PGP thread. Kind of disingenuous though since the site has awful COMSEC right now. Maybe firearms? Also a popular topic.

We get many people who create accounts just to see the inside the NO&UE forum, then they leave and never come back. Maybe we should open that forum to reduce the barrier to entry? I'm sure the number of new accounts would dwindle, but perhaps the accounts we do get would be from people who are actually interested and want to participate. At any rate, none of the &T night ops threads were walled off.

As for advertisement? I'm the world's shittiest salesman, haven't got a clue. Where do people like us even congregate these days?

52 views are better than no views. It means people are visiting even if they aren't saying anything. That's something to work with. ...or, it's a bunch of bots.

Opening the forum up a bit to topics other than strictly Night Ops might be a good idea, especially seeing as most of us are also interested in similar topics such as firearms & cryptosecurity. These topics otherwise get segregated into "Spurious Generalities" as there's no real way to tie them directly to Night Ops, aside from firearms in which the general consensus is "Don't." But on that topic, a lot of the gear & training habits associated with the firearms community for example (carrying equipment, 'tactical' attire, situational awareness, etc) easily cross-pollinate with Night Ops.

Also, if we did go the .onion route, would it still be possible to access NO through regular HTTPS? Does updating one format also update the other, or can we only pick one option? Going the .onion route would definitely be more secure and expose us to a new community who values security, but staying on the "open" web is certainly more accessible. Especially to those who aren't as technically savvy to know what TOR is or if one of us decides to visit NO from another device that doesn't have TOR (as I sometimes do when I'm on the move).

Secant wrote:As for advertisement? I'm the world's shittiest salesman, haven't got a clue. Where do people like us even congregate these days?

I couldn't sell oxygen to a drowning man.

We are all books containing thousands of pages and within each lies an irreparable truth.
What is locked, can be opened. What is hidden, can be found. What is yours... can be mine.

I like the onion route but we should also maintain a regular HTTPS for the total newbies out there. In fact I REALLY like the onion idea because as it stands the website seems to hate TOR.

Advertisement, so to speak, is easy. Just let the content speak for itself, we need stories abroad plain and simple. Nothing we do, no design or set up will make any difference without actual stories to spark the imaginations in people. Many of us "get" what makes us different from established communities like urbex, what we're going to have to show them why this can be such a blast. Stick to classic night ops so we don't come across as the "bad guys". Might as well have a thread going on Reddit for such a purpose and cross post elsewhere too. Direct to the HTTPS site which then has stupid simple details for how to access .onion (and of course a proper forum) which would undoubtedly have more in-depth stories. That would also be the ideal version of the forum to have other subjects typical of fringe forums were one to add them.

Also, content such as Xanatos' Car Shop Op are a FANTASTIC example. Any way to create a focus on videos, maybe?

Videos take time and largely depend on the lighting of the AO, unless you want to bother with an IR camera which is a real pain in the arse. Not to mention possibly revealing details about your location, which might compromise PERSEC -especially if you're recording with a phone or other personalised device. That being said, it's the clearest way of showing what Night Ops actually is and proving it can be done.

We are all books containing thousands of pages and within each lies an irreparable truth.
What is locked, can be opened. What is hidden, can be found. What is yours... can be mine.

OK, so we should present a normal HTTPS site as well as a .onion. We can choose to present the same forums to both access paths, or we can have separate forums for each. I don't yet know of a way to present individual boards within the same forum to the .onion, but I can look into that if that's the way we want it to work.

Psych, that's a convincing argument. Have good content, post it around, and people will come. Maybe Xana would be willing to demonstrate some techniques on video under controlled conditions? Like that one of the ghillie veil. Op reports with pictures, like some of the dare ops threads, or even "professionally" done like for infiltration.org, are especially engaging as well. Maybe we could integrate the dare ops forum into NO&UE proper instead of hiding it in a subforum?

I also have some wiki software ready to replace the library. I think there's a video plugin for that which would let us post writeups based around video content.

I like the wiki idea, as it stands the library is fairly clunky. I mean, I don't mind because I'm old school but I think a lot of more useful information gets lost in the mix with how short attention spans are these days. A wiki would lead to more fluid information connecting to each other. I would be very interested in contributing to such an endeavor in lieu of the typical "guide" format because the work could be done in finished sections.

With the videos, they're definitely a good show and obviously conditional on when a good video can be taken. However, I know of a few targets that are farther away that I'd love to record and edit for the cause. I guess I just feel like we have these amazing videos but they're just sitting in the library with new users having no idea what they're missing because certainly a lot of people can't be bothered to download the files. Secant, just curious do you know how often they get downloaded?

So while this is all being hashed out, the question now is simple: where all do we want to post?

I've come across a few other fringe forums unfortunately many are recently deceased, so to speak.

I caught this place awhile back when I noticed someone there is an apparent user here and wrote a nice guide up, there. However, the forum appears to have mostly flatlined. Still, cross-posting wouldn't be too big of a hassle and might be worth it. Users there did seem interested in the concept.

Niggas in Space is probably the most accurate &T clone in terms of content, appearance, and general vibes I've seen to date. It's also somewhat active and could hold a topic easily enough.

I'll list more when I think of them/find others, and also we have Reddit, possibly 4chan to post things up to. I see no reason why night ops couldn't just be shuffled into urbex areas here, specifying our different approach and goals with each new topic we make. I think it would be wise to continue doing this for awhile and simply reference the site here and there rather than blatantly advertising. Basically, avoid saying "Hey come over to our website!", just drop some bread crumbs and make them curious.

Psychlonic wrote:I guess I just feel like we have these amazing videos but they're just sitting in the library with new users having no idea what they're missing because certainly a lot of people can't be bothered to download the files. Secant, just curious do you know how often they get downloaded?

They're viewable in-browser now as .webm files.

Also, you think op stories could work as > greentexts?

We are all books containing thousands of pages and within each lies an irreparable truth.
What is locked, can be opened. What is hidden, can be found. What is yours... can be mine.

OK, I'll keep going with the wiki idea. Have a look at dokuwiki (https://www.dokuwiki.org), that's the software it'd be.

As far as I can tell there have been about 40 hits on .webm files since the 28th that aren't spiders or bots. Even though the videos are viewable in-browser now, we're definitely not doing enough to show them off. Not that we want to be a video site exclusively. Maybe we should have a youtube channel or something, lol.

We got a good bit of traffic from 4chan that one time, so we know that can be successful. Anyone know what exactly we posted there that got attention? It's too bad zoklet isn't around anymore either, we're going after the dregs of the dregs of &T at this point. There is an &T subreddit as well but it's not very active. Some familiar faces on there though.
>start an offshoot website for niche audience
>pretty successful because of people coming from parent website
>parent website dies
>everyone leaves
>mfw

Could allow for some pretty interesting possibilities, definitely if we were going to go that route we would all be best ditching our current usernames, utilizing maximum PERSEC measures, and minimizing social interactions on the site. That would certainly be the epitome of no-bullshit stories and letting the content speak for itself. I know there are some members who would feel much more comfortable if that were the case as well. You know, starting from scratch. It's not really what I had in mind, but it's not a bad idea and worth considering. Things have been pretty slack lately. Even though it's nothing serious, involving more videos and money would up the ante a little bit.

Secant wrote:And twitch. That's a popular millennial thing right? Xana, you could live stream your ops.

I've often thought about that, and I'm sure it could be done with today's technology, but I'm nowhere near tech-savvy enough to set it all up. Not to mention feedback issues possibly interfering with the op itself - I'd need a way to communicate with people watching and it could lead to a drop in situational awareness. I experienced the same thing recording the Church Op because I had to keep an eye on the screen of the camera instead of watching my surroundings and it also hampered my natural nightvision.

We are all books containing thousands of pages and within each lies an irreparable truth.
What is locked, can be opened. What is hidden, can be found. What is yours... can be mine.

What do you guys think about some kind of badge system to reward users who post about their ops? Right now all users have the status of "Member", but we could add a status like "confirmed ops" based on the number of verified ops a user has completed. Could be a way to encourage people to post about their ops so they can get credit, but we'd need some kind of proof system like for dare ops.

I don't think it would affect PERSEC too much, at least no more than posting about an op on this board damages PERSEC in the first place. It's certainly the case that badges would act as an indicator of who to look at first for anyone investigating NONET. But they'd be based fundamentally on info that's already out there.

The way user ranks work in phpBB is that they can be automatically set based on post count, or special ranks can be manually assigned. Post count doesn't really map to the number of ops completed, so maybe we could have just a few special ranks to keep things from getting out of control. Maybe something like this:
- "Member": post at least once (same as it is now)
- "Operator": 1+ confirmed op
- "Ops Specialist": 5+ confirmed ops
- "Shadow": 10+ confirmed ops
- "Ninja": 20+ confirmed ops
(- "Xanatos": 50+ confirmed ops)

Open to suggestions for the title names and tier levels. We can define a "confirmed op" as any night op (successful or otherwise) that includes a report and some sort of proof (such as a photo). Thoughts?

Why not just wipe the slate clean on that as well and start over? One thing that used to plague the site was people dropping in out of the blue after being silent for ages and being an instant expert who expected the forum to grovel at their feet. Besides, it might be motivating for everyone to start at the same beginning level.

Ok gotcha. Guess it'd be up to each person to decide whether to post proof, and maybe having a .onion would give people some confidence. The proof shouldn't need to be anything more than what we're doing far dares, and people have been reasonably careful so far with those.

I was just going to go though the Dares since we don't necessarily have proof for ops posted to NO&UE. Wiping the slate clean is an intriguing idea, even though it seems a shame to discard the effort users have already put in. Arguments for and against? I can't decide.

Probably best to keep the Dares, just make them a more featured, erm... 'feature' of the Experiences section. If we want to use Dares as a 'rank' system, I already took the liberty of keeping track of how many Dares have been completed by whom.

We are all books containing thousands of pages and within each lies an irreparable truth.
What is locked, can be opened. What is hidden, can be found. What is yours... can be mine.

Not suggesting we remove the dares, but if we want to do custom statuses based on number of ops, should we begin counting at zero, or go through the dares and set statuses retroactively for people who've already completed some? Your counts will make it easy to do the latter if we choose that approach.

I still do like the idea of moving all the dare threads to NO&UE though.

Keep the Dares but start the ranking system from scratch as a new 'feature', perhaps? We still need to work out the exact mechanics of how to implement it and what counts as 'proof' of an op. Not to mention not every op is the same - I'd have more respect for someone who's infiltrated 5 high-risk targets than someone who's traipsed through 100 backyards.

We are all books containing thousands of pages and within each lies an irreparable truth.
What is locked, can be opened. What is hidden, can be found. What is yours... can be mine.

I agree in principle about the quality vs. quantity issue, but that's a difficult thing to judge fairly and consistently. It's a lot easier to go by a simple count. Maybe we can have just a single special "operator" status for users who have completed a particularly impressive or challenging op? Hold a vote to decide if it's worthy perhaps?

We can treat proof as a "you know it when you see it" sort of deal, or we can mandate that users take a picture with some predefined sign like for dares. I'd lean towards the latter.

I wouldn't want to force anyone to take pictures if they don't want (exception for Dares, obviously), but I think the more experienced of us here can sniff out bullshit fairly easily. I don't think anyone's gonna want 'ranks' that badly to start making shit up though.

Although if we can earn custom post signatures & avatar hats, then I just might post about that one time I infiltrated the Vatican with George Clooney and we had to shoot our way out when we got caught by the Swiss Guard.

We are all books containing thousands of pages and within each lies an irreparable truth.
What is locked, can be opened. What is hidden, can be found. What is yours... can be mine.

Where we could post basic tutorials and that kind of things ? I already know 2 youtube channels with guys posting workouts, (not really night) ops, and their channels are growing very slowly but surely.

The thing that bringed me here first was the way of the shadow which had a link to this website and which i took from a 4chan dropbox, i don't know how other people really landed here though.

I can also say (as a ghostfag) that the thing i really like about this forum are the ops stories, it may be a good idea to let confirmed like Psychlonic and Xanatos rate ops and give away some kind of "points" for example.

I'm kind of against adding any kind of points system to night ops as it defeats the purpose of what we do here. Healthy competition is okay, as long as you're trying to better yourself instead of out-perform others.

We are all books containing thousands of pages and within each lies an irreparable truth.
What is locked, can be opened. What is hidden, can be found. What is yours... can be mine.

I don't think youtube would ban any "stealth" videos right now anyway as it has not much to do with politics, the ban focus on everything "political" for now.

It may become annoying even for us later tho, i don't want to begin a debate about youtube etc.. but it starts with banning funny guys or videos, then it may follow and ban any video related to guns, weapons...

Videos are the easiest and most entertaining way to get hyped about anything but since it's very hard to film at night the spread of the core of night opping is very limited with this media anyway

Tell me if you have trouble reading my english, i'm not sure to be very accurate sometimes, but it is better to post anyway than to leave you alone right ?

They've started cracking down on gun-related videos (hence why InRange has started uploading to Pornhub - not even kidding) and knowing Youtube they might expand their scope to target anything remotely "tactical" or "scary" in the interests of "public safety" or some-such nonsense. I'd like to see more opping-related videos too but, as you pointed out, they are mighty difficult to film.

We are all books containing thousands of pages and within each lies an irreparable truth.
What is locked, can be opened. What is hidden, can be found. What is yours... can be mine.

Youtube is cracking down because advertisers don't want their ads associated with controversial topics (such as, unfortunately, gun videos). Google can flimflam about "community guidelines" all they want but at the end of the day it's about that sweet sweet ad money. If advertisers find opping videos to be objectionable, that type of video will inevitably be targeted for the purge. It doesn't bode well that some aspects of opping are not entirely legal. That being said, there are many successful urbex channels, so maybe there's room for ops as well. Or maybe we should go to pornhub right off the hop.

Also, I fucking love that WoTS is still out there floating around. Not that we didn't already know this or anything, but Psych is literally a legend.

It makes me feel all the worse for having no drive to write a new guide that would blow it out of the water. I have a really hard time taking the "teacher" role in any fashion these days, would rather spend that time acquiring new experiences, skills, or information.

It makes me feel all the worse for having no drive to write a new guide that would blow it out of the water. I have a really hard time taking the "teacher" role in any fashion these days, would rather spend that time acquiring new experiences, skills, or information.

Don't worry about it dude. WoTS has aged really well... and you never know when inspiration will strike.